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Comment: Allan Massie: Prodigal son returns a political playboy

Alex Salmond broke with convention when he combined an expression of sympathy for the bereaved families of the three Black Watch soldiers killed in Iraq on Thursday with an attack on the “chicanery and duplicity” of the government that had ordered their deployment in a more dangerous part of the country in order to release American forces for the expected attack on Falluja.

This breach of a convention, which was honoured by both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, will not have worried him. He was backed up by Nationalist MSPs in Holyrood, and it brought him back into the limelight, out of the shadows, where he has lingered since the SNP conference some weeks ago.

It would be wrong to doubt the sincerity of Mr Salmond’s indignation at what has been happening in Iraq. Nevertheless there is something hypocritical — even, dare one say, something that might be fairly called